Incendere
by mjolk
Summary: Post series, Amon and Robin decided to take control of their own lives. (Crossover with Gunslinger Girl)
1. prologue

INCENDERE a Witch Hunter Robin drabble fic

It was late at night and the piazza was deserted by its usual tourist crowd. Empty and vast, the former terrace of a huge villa owned by a noble family from the last century was a perfect vantage place to view the town below, providing spectacular view of the entire town. It was the beginning of spring but the night was still as cold at it had been during winter.

A young girl stood near the stone balustrade at the edge of the piazza. Her dark blond hair looked even darker in the darkness of the night, her dress dark and heavy, seemingly weighing her down, keeping her feet firmly on the ground. She gazed down at the town whose occupants were probably sleeping soundly in their beds, noting how beautiful the town looked at night with yellowish light shining from open windows. She breathed in deeply, smelling the faint fragrant of a blossoming frangipani bush nearby. She loved being back here, the country she grew up in. In Japan, she had often found herself dreaming of medieval castles, cobbled uneven roads, and sunsets behind lush green hills - she'd woke up disorientedly, unable to recognize the alien bed and bedroom she was sleeping in. Even the morning sunlight streaming from the open window had a different quality to it. A different shade, a different tone, a different warmth.

The clicking sound of a lighter case being opened beside her made her turned. The man beside her was leaning his back on the balustrade, an unlit cigarette hanging from between his lips. She smiled faintly and the end of the cigarette flared briefly from within and lit itself up. The man paused midway in the act of bringing his lighter to his cigarette, shot her a disapproving frown, closed his lighter and put it back in his coat pocket. Still smiling, she turned her head back to the panorama before her.

"The church," she began, breaking the silent of the night, pointing at the dark shape of a tall conical spire protruding from the center of the town below them, "is now almost a thousand years old. It was caught by fire several times in the medieval ages. Back then churches were the center of knowledge, the monks being the only people who were literate. When a church was burned down, plenty of valuable books and manuscripts disappeared. It was always a tragedy, really."

The man beside her inhaled his cigarette deeply. "Not all knowledge are good," he said quietly.

She shook her head slowly, "There may be a time in the future when it may turn out to be good and useful."

"Are we supposed to care?"

She lowered her head. "I was the result of such a knowledge. Would you say I'm something bad?"

He stared at the space in front of him, not looking at her, not answering her, either.

She was silent for long minutes. She raised her head again and focused her gaze on a particular large building by the bank of the river running through the town below. It was easily recognizable by its domed roof. She bit her lip and concentrated. On a dark 4th-floor window of the building, an orange light appeared. It grew larger by the minute and moments later, the window next to it was lighted by the same orange glow.

She turned her body abruptly against the spectacle. "Let's go now. It's getting cold."

The man nodded. He took out his half-burnt cigarette from his mouth, dropped it on the ground, and estinguished it with his booted foot. He put his hand on the girl's back and they started walking together towards a black car parked at the edge of the piazza.

Below them, a building burned through the night.  
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END

WHR is property of Bandai Visual, Sunrise Inc, et al.  
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Notes:  
I know this is too long to qualify as a drabble, but I think it's too short to qualify as a fic too. This fic is set post-series. It's been a while since I watched WHR and I think I might have gotten some things wrongly. Sorry for that. And, oh, you DO realize this fic is about Amon and Robin, do you? D 


	2. chapter 1

She woke up with a start. In the distance, she could hear the faint wailing sound of a sirene. She sat up on the bed slowly, focusing her sleepy gaze on the open window in her bedroom that showed a view of the window of the building across the narrow street. She got out of the bed and picked up her robe from the back of an old wooden chair standing by the bedside table. 

The small apartment they were currently staying in occupied the second floor of an old house in a narrow alleyway not far from the center of the town. The ground floor was occupied by a different tenant whom they had never met for the two months they had been living there.

Robin went out of the apartment and headed towards the staircase to climb up it. The third and the fourth floor were unoccupied, but she was not interested in them. She went up all the way to the open rooftop, where she knew she could get a better look.

She opened the door leading to the rooftop and noticed immediately the light illuminating the night sky. She walked nearer to the edge of the rooftop and saw that a large fire was raging at the north section of the city. She stood there at the edge, savoring the contrast between the coldness of the early spring night air and the hotness she knew the fire she was looking at would feel.

"I think we could safely conclude that the building has been burned down to the ground," a man's voice spoke from behind her.

"The fire is spreading," she said without turning around.

Amon walked towards her and stood beside her, staring at the same view. "They'll put it out before sunrise," he said, nodding towards the burning buildings in the distance. He turned to look at her. "You'll catch a cold, being out here without wearing a coat. Go back to bed."

Instead of heeding his words, she asked him, "Where are we going tomorrow?"

"Away," was his answer.

"A mission for you," the man sitting at the table said. He was known as Jan, the supervisor to the little operation they had in the facility. He held out a thick folder in his hand.

"Just for Henrietta and me?" the man standing by the window asked. His name was Jose. His partner was called Henrietta - a small girl with a machine gun inside her violin case. He reached out and took the folder from Jan's outstretched hand.

"Yes. The request came from an institution linked to the Defense ministry. The targets are deemed to be very dangerous. These are the files. We think it would be easier and safer to have only one fratello to do this. The targets won't have a reason to be suspicious of a pair of brother and sister."

"Who are they?" Jose asked, picking up the files.

"The defense ministry has a strong suspicion that they are behind the recent fire in Florence."

Jose flipped through the files absent-mindedly. "As I recall, the fire started in a building that a university research facility? It spread and burned the building next to it, though. An office, I think."

"You're right. The press was told it was caused by an electric failure. But the truth is, nobody knew how the fire started. There was no clue at all. The 'university research facility' was actually a research facility owned by the organization who commissioned this mission to us."

Jose looked up and frowned. "What organization is this, Jan?"

The older man shrugged. "All I know is that it's called Solomon. No one knows what they do exactly."

Jose looked down on the open folder in his hands again. Two slightly blurry pictures were clipped to the first page. In the first picture was a pretty young girl with blond hair. In the second picture, a dark-haired man with shoulder-length hair and wary expression, as if he knew his picture was being taken without him knowing. His next targets, the two people he must tell Henrietta to kill without mercy.

They stood in the middle of a piazza, tourists milling around them. Amon had been staring intently at an unmarked building among a row of old buildings flanking one side of the piazza. He nodded imperceptibly at it and said in a low voice, "The building at the right end has an emergency stair at the back. We use it tonight to climb to the roof."

That night, they exited the building the same way they came in. In Amon's hands, a thick account book detailing every single Solomon property in Italy.

TBC

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Notes:  
I've been cleaning up my old laptop and found this unfinished chapter I wrote as a continuation of the previous drabble I wrote And ... this is turning out to be a Gunslinger Girl crossover! 


End file.
